Wednesday, November 25, 2009

let me joke (we do not like your jokes)

First, I almost never post YouTube videos, but since I'm on vacation and have some time on my hands, I actually watched one today! It's a keeper if you like the Muppets and/or Bohemian Rhapsody:



Second, today was great, albeit lazy; I decided to stay in bed rather than being a good little corporate martyr, and so I skipped the conference call that I might have dialed into in favor of another hour of sleep. Then, I putzed around upstairs, talked to my mom, and made another batch of rolls. During the two-hour dough rising time, I took a bubble bath (I put bubble baths on my to-do list for the week, so they're legit) and checked in on Twitter and other areas of the interweb. Then, I spent some long, tiring quality time shaping the rolls with my bare hands. My grandmother showed up at some point and refused to comment on whether my rolls looked okay; but, they still taste delicious, so whatever.

My mother made yet another excellent supper (tenderloins and homemade mac and cheese), and my brother and father told amusing stories of some town where the mayor, restaurant owner, and woman who lives in the old schoolhouse are all siblings. Say what you will, but small towns are v. v. interesting. After supper, I continued pretending to read while watching a devastating episode of 'Criminal Minds' and some 'CSI:New York'. Actually, I made it through the first four chapters of 'Cambridge Companion to British Theatre: 1730-1830'. So far, so good, even if my father asked me what I was reading and then said 'where do you get this shit?' I'm quite pleased with it so far, and now I just want to dive headfirst into historical research, when what I really need to do is skim the surface so that I have time to keep writing.

Along the lines of research, though, I spent some quality time tonight attempting to decide which database software to get for my Mac. I could have used OneNote, but it's a) not a database and b) not available for a Mac. I need something that will enable me to easily keep track of a wide variety of factoids, timelines, etc. One option might be to do a combo - download this timeline-creating software that I found to create a pretty visual timeline of every historical period that I'm interested in, and then download a OneNote knockoff to store freeform notes. A database has the advantage of being queryable, making it easy to run reports on different categories, dates, sources, etc.; but something like OneNote feels more organic, which may fit better into the writing process.

And on that dorky note, I shall take my technical conundrum and go to bed. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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